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CU Boulder researchers lead bid to save vanishing Arapaho language

New online dictionary to be followed by print version

By Charlie Brennan

Staff Writer

Posted:
01/18/2017 02:06:34 PM MST

Updated:
01/18/2017 07:01:29 PM MST

Andrew Cowell, chair of the University of Colorado Department of Linguistics, works with three Arapaho elders in Rocky Mountain National Park, documenting place names there. (Sara Wiles / Courtesy photo)

An effort is underway to save one of the oldest languages to have been spoken in the Boulder Valley.

Its name is common in this community — with a slightly altered spelling — attached to a key east-west thoroughfare, as well as a peak that glistens with snow to the west in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.

But Arapaho, as a language, is highly endangered, and a project based at the University of Colorado could prove pivotal in saving it from vanishing forever.

Andrew Cowell, chair of CU's Department of Linguistics, presides over what is called the Arapaho Language Project, and he is doing all he can to save a language spoken now by probably only 200 people in the world.

Although the Arapaho Language Project was launched in 2002, it was buttressed over the recent winter break with the addition of an online Arapaho dictionary, showing an Arapaho-English translation for about 30,000 words.

It is the first thorough dictionary of the language ever compiled, Cowell said, to be followed by a print version within two years.

"I'm really interested in trying to make it one of the best documented languages, so that even if it does disappear, there will be a rich collection of stories and songs, so that it will still have life, even if it isn't spoken fluently," Cowell said.

But he and his colleagues are doing all they can to ensure that it doesn't go away.

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"The Arapaho people themselves are very concerned that it be saved," Cowell said. "They see it as a clear connection to their past, to their culture and identity and a connection to their ancestors."

Languages are dying at rapid pace

Cowell said members of both the Northern Arapaho and Southern Arapaho tribes frequented the Boulder Valley, and that when the first settlers arrived in Boulder in 1856, they found an Arapaho encampment at the foot of Boulder Canyon, at what until recently was named Settlers Park.

The park was occupied in 1858 by gold prospectors, who promised a Southern Arapaho chief they would leave by the following year. They soon broke that promise by staking claim to the land and founding the Boulder City Town Company.

There are now about 7,000 enrolled members of the Northern Arapaho living on the Wind River reservation in Wyoming, and another 13,000 members of the Southern Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes in western Oklahoma.

Cowell, who has done the bulk of his research on the subject at the Wind River Reservation, said there are only about 200 people left who speak the Arapaho language — or Hinono'eitiit — and none of them are under 60 years old.

"I think this can prove successful in making sure it doesn't go away," Cowell said of the project, "and it can increase the number of people who have some knowledge of the language. There may not be many new fluent speakers, but they can understand some of the words, and start to understand some of their stories, and so forth."

One of Cowell's partners in the project is Russian-born Irina Wagner, a third-year doctoral student at CU whose research focus is the Arapaho language and its revitalization. She has been involved in that field of study for four years, she said, and spent the last two-and-a-half years focused on assembling the recently added dictionary.

"I started in this because I am really interested in Native American languages and I am really personally concerned with the idea of language," she said. "There are 6,000 languages in the world, and a language dies every two weeks. That's what they usually say.

"I know of elders who have died, and who were the last speakers of their language. That really bothered me."

Wagner, who has been in the U.S. for nine years and grew up speaking both Russian and Tatar, concurs with Cowell that Arapaho is an extremely complex tongue.

"English is 100 times easier," said Wagner, who despite her years of study admits to knowing only "how to read and, a little bit, write" Arapaho. "Speaking is really hard. I can do really simple phrases, everyday phrases such as 'Thank you, How are you, I'd like to eat, I am hungry.'"

Polysynthetic

The Arapaho language has just 16 letters, Cowell said. But its complexity comes into play, for example, with the fact the language often combines two or three different ideas in the same word.

"What you'll find is that there is one word for 'walk slowly,' another for 'walk quickly,' another for 'walk away' and another for 'walk sideways,'" with the result that there are more than 50 different words meaning "walk," he said.

The language, he added, is polysynthetic, meaning that words tend to combine multiple ideas into a single word.

"That's what makes it really complex. One word in Arapaho usually translates into three or four English words," Cowell said. "There's cases where one Arapaho word translates into eight or nine English words."

Cowell said there are 300,000 ways to say "see," with variants for "see clearly," "see badly" and so on.

While the language has just 16 letters, it also has a numeral; 3 is used to represent a sound roughly translating as "th," as in "three."

The website has many practical features, ranging from a specialized glossary button for a trip to the casino to a video — future new content will include more use of YouTube — on how a negotiation at a car dealership might be conducted.

There's even a translation of every NFL team name, although there won't be much use for Neeyeito'oyei3i — that's "Broncos," translated as "they buck people off" — until late this summer.

"The Arapaho people themselves are very concerned that it be saved," said Cowell, who credits great continuing support from the Arapaho tribal members on his research trips to the Wind River Reservation.

"They see it as a clear connection to their past, to their culture and identity and connection to their ancestors."

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